


Mockingjay Part 2 Drabbles

by titania522



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Epilogue, Gen, Hijacked!Peeta, MJ - Freeform, PTSD, Peeta's POV, Post Mockingjay, Revolution, capitol circle, everlark, everlark fanfiction, growing together, inspired by mockingjay part 2 teaser trailer, mj2, mockingjay part 2 film, tigriss basement, toastbabies - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-10
Updated: 2015-11-23
Packaged: 2018-04-03 18:58:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4111549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/titania522/pseuds/titania522
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by various from the Mockingjay Part 2 Teaser Trailers and Official Theatrical Trailers.  How Katniss and Peeta move from the events in the war to learning to heal.  Multiple parts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Drabble 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peeta confronts the moment he may have to let Katniss go forever. Set in Tigriss' basement before the advance on the Capitol. Inspired by scenes from the Mockingjay Part 2 trailer.

I watch as Katniss pulls the key to the cuffs from her pocket. It makes a soft, tinkling sound as if it were knocking against something else in the pocket.  She unlocks them before stuffing the key back in again with a possessive air, as if she needed that key and whatever else she held in that pocket more than life itself. I rub my aching wrists, flexing the tightness from my fingers.  

 

When I glance at Katniss, there is a madness in her eyes that makes me suspicious for a moment. The voices Snow put inside my head rear up, whispering to me, telling me she’s a mutt, that she’s not to be trusted, but I swat them fiercely away. _No!_ That’s not mutt madness in her grey eyes. It’s desperation - like the desperation of our parting under the lightening tree, one more forced goodbye.   _I’ll meet you at midnight_.  A promise we’d both perversely kept in District 13. I was in a mad, hijacked fury then. Now, I only want to pull her away from this mission and hide us both somewhere safe, where no one can find us again.

 

“Listen,” she says.  “Don’t do anything foolish.”

 

“No. It’s last-resort stuff. Completely,” I quip but it comes out hollow.

 

Slowly, she lifts her arms and soon they are around my neck. She voluntarily touches me and this makes me hesitate, freezes me in place until an impulse older than my tortures, older than the voices, compels me to embrace her in return.  My arms tremble with the memory of her warm body in my arms, when she represented not a threat but an invitation to safety against our mutual terrors.  I’m awash in every moment I’ve ever held her, from the staged hugs before the Capitol cameras to the quiet ones on the train, the ones only we knew about.  Nights when we held onto each other, nights the Capitol hadn’t known about.  Of this I’m certain.  Those memory aren’t cold and shiny. They are sweet and tender, but they are now gone forever and the recognition of that is the worst pain I’ve endured yet.

 

She buries her face in my neck, her breath fanning out over my skin and I think of the Quarter Quell, the way she gripped me after Finnick had revived me. That memory, too, is intact, and I come to the realization that she has always wanted me to live. This recognition is simply another dagger of pain, coming too late for either of us.

 

“All right, then.” She releases me with a deep, steadying breath of her own and the emptiness rushes in to take her place.  

 

“It’s time,” says Tigriss. Katniss kisses the woman’s cheek, pulling up her scarf over her nose, and follows Gale out into the cold.

 

I wait a few moments before tugging the cloak over my face and stepping out onto the wide Capitol boulevard.  Snowflakes, cold and sharp as needles, prick my skin.  The sun tries to force its light and heat through the gloom of snow but through the haze, I see shivering masses moving towards the President’s Mansion.  Thanks to Gale’s height, I can just make out his figure disappearing into the grey winter light, and I make my decision. I can no longer mean to her what I once did but there is one last thing I can do.  Instead of heading in the opposite direction to create the distraction I had promised, I follow them. I don’t know what I can do but I have one certainty. I have to go where Katniss goes, no matter where the path ends. I can no more abandon her than I can leave my true self behind. The memory of us demands at least that.


	2. Drabble 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katniss takes the first small steps towards recovery. Set during growing together period. Inspired by scene in Mockingjay, Part 2.

 

“Is that how you got there?  You followed us?” I ask him, astonished and yet, not surprised. It is just the kind of thing Peeta would do.

 

He shrugs, glancing out the open window, the light breeze coming through it ruffling his hair..  “It was a last-minute decision, but I…” he drops his eyes, struggling with something, maybe the truth, deciding to press on.  “I couldn’t leave you alone.”

 

I close my eyes as I absorb his confession. Once, these small declarations of devotion would have embarrassed me.  Then they would have thrilled me.  Now, even the hint of anything intense threatens to overwhelm me.  He’s been back for two months, and we are only now approaching the subject of the war, just barely skimming the surface of all the pain and loss we’d both experienced.  

 

“Katniss?” he asks gently, and I open my eyes to his face full of concern. “We can stop talking about this if you like.”

 

I feel my face soften, the smile that is never so far away anymore when he is present spreading shyly over my lips, a sharp contrast to the grimace of pain that I wore for three months after my return from the Capitol.

 

“No, I want...I want to talk about this.  I want to talk about everything.”  I glance out at the rising sun, glowing warm and bright in the dawn sky.  The bedclothes are still in disarray behind us and we both wear sleep like a spring cloak over our shoulders.  If I’m so open to talking, if the sun brings warmth and penetrates the fog of hopelessness, it’s because I still feel the imprint of his arms around me from our first good, sleepless night in months.

 

“Me too. Even if it hurts, we should always be truthful.  When you want to stop, we’ll stop. Just let what we say be real.”

 

“Real?” I say as I turn back to him, my eyes lingering on his sleep-tousled hair, the bright, bedraggled blue of his eyes, the sun dancing along his fine lashes.  “You want the truth?” I press again.

 

“Yes, always.” he answers, his brow furrowed in askance.

 

I take courage from the sun, the fiery ball that has now risen proudly into the sky.  I turn back to him, and I know it’s a first step but I come to the realization that the nights don’t need to end, no one is keeping track anymore. It matters to no one any longer what it all means except to us.

 

“Then why don’t you just stay?” I ask, suddenly very afraid that he’ll say no.

 

“I...I stayed...I stayed last night…” he stammered in confusion.

 

“But you’ll leave.  You’ll go home. You want the truth?  This is the truth.  I want to wake up every morning like this,” I say, gathering strength from my words. The breeze lifts my hair with insistence. Soon it will be a gust that whips it out of the way.  “I want you to stay.”

 

Peeta’s eye widen but only momentarily, confusion slowly replaced by resolution.  He must know.  It was always going to be this way with us.  There was no other way it could be. “I’ll get my things.”

 

“Not yet,” I whisper, a surge of emotion that feels like joy welling up in me.  “Let the sun come up first.”

 


	3. Drabble 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by the Mockingjay Part 2 - Theatrical Trailer, "We March Together." Even after so many years, nightmares still come to haunt Katniss. But Peeta's arms are there to comfort her.

_Effluvium.  A river of stinking human waste and chemical sludge, burning in places, releasing bubbles of noxious vapors.  Dank, smelly, full of things she doesn’t want to think too hard about.  And roses. The smell of roses so thick, she gags and trembles, overwhelmed by their sickly sweetness._

_Before she can recover, savage mutts crash over the sewage pipes, some taking bites out of each other, some hurtling mindlessly into the poisonous brew, an endless wall of physical and psychological depravities with only one objective._

Katniss _, their voices hiss._

_Finnick is blocking the path between the muttations and the remaining Star Squad.  Something compresses – time, space, the very fabric of reality itself – but as he wields his mighty trident, flotsam suddenly surrounds Katniss. A creature’s maw hangs from the sinews of Finnick’s neck muscles, tearing his head clear off his shoulders.  Gale’s body bobs by, his torso only partially detached from the rest of his body, before it sinks into the river of fetid fire._

_And Peeta’s face, once whispering her name, is replaced by the jarring and incongruous features of the lizards themselves, a pale spine emerging from his back, mouth stretched wide as it descends on her, a burst of rose-smelling gas preceding his death blow..._

“Noooooo!!!!” her screams reverberate through the darkness. The pitch black of night gives the illusion that the nightmare has crept its way into the waking world and for a mad moment, Katniss is sure she is still submerged in the horror-scape of her nightmare.  She thrashes wildly, fighting mutts that have long dissolved into the gallery of memory, until her blows land on something sturdy and infinitely more real.

“Katniss...shhh...it’s okay,” comes his sleep-thickened voice. Peeta’s voice has lost its timbre of madness and now calls to her with a sorrow as deep as the span of their lives, yet so dense and full of horrors.

His arms encircle her and the tension that held her captive relents, his embrace quelling her terrors, though the remnants of the nightmare remain like the aftertaste of vomit in her mouth.  He rocks her, murmuring sweetly, caressing the rigidness from her body until she finally gives herself over to the reality of Peeta’s arms.  District 12. Their home in Victors’ Village. Their bed.  Safe.

“It’s not real, Katniss. Not real...” he repeats over and over, still rocking, and she believes him. Because it is his voice she hears, and she will always believe the words that he tells her.

At length, when she has returned to normal, she whispers, “I’m sorry.”

“Shhhhh...don’t apologize,” he says, his hands smoothing her hair away from her tear-drenched face.   “Do you want to talk about it?”

She doesn’t. She normally doesn’t want to talk about everything anyway. But she can’t tell him that he’s become a mutt in her nightmares. It would batter him, for it is the thing he still struggles the most to forgive of himself – that he’d once become a kind of mutt himself and had hurt her as a result.  So she shakes her head and says instead, “I almost lost you.”

He squeezes her closer, and she feels his lips on the top of her head, leaving a small kiss on her messy hair. “Is that what you dreamed about? Losing me?”

“Yes,” she whispered into his chest, squeezing her eyes shut, the burning threatening to turn into more tears if she gives in. “I dream about it. Over and over. Like the moment Haymitch told me you were left behind in the arena.  No matter which way I lose you, it feels the same way.”

Peeta places a finger beneath her chin and tilts her head back to look at him. Even in the dim moonlight of the half-open window, his eyes shine a clear blue, without a cloud or shadow to mar their deep color. “You’re not going to lose me again. I know that doesn’t keep you from having nightmares. I still get them too, but I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.  Do you understand?”

Katniss nods and tilts her head further, silently entreating him for a kiss, which he gives freely, like he gives everything else, both what she asks for and what she doesn’t. More than a person would ever need to be happy.  She wants to linger a bit longer, the feel of his warm lips on hers with their own special comfort, calling to mind the balmy summer nights when they’d first learned to lose their grief and hopelessness in each other.

But a cry splits the night air, at first low and mewling, then insistent and impatient, completely heedless of whatever hovers between Katniss and Peeta, whether it is the hangover of their night terrors of the promise of something softer, gentler and more pleasurable.  The child won’t be ignored and Peeta smiles at the sound of his daughter calling out to them.

“I’ll bring her to you,” he says as he adjusts his prosthetic, rising from the bed.  Katniss stays him with the soft touch of her hand.

“No, let’s go get her together,” she says.  He nods as he gives her his hand and helps her from the bed. But before she is able to take another step, he pulls her into his arms and holds her flush against him.

She knows what it means. It means he loves her. That she can finally keep him somewhere where no one will touch him. That no one can take him from her again.

It means he will stay with her, together with their little family.

For always.

 


	4. Dandelion Wish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mockingjay, Part 2, Epilogue  
> Peeta's POV  
> Spoilers!

“Do you like the dandelions?” I say, waving the flower in front of small, golden-haired boy.  “Here, take one,” I hand my son one of the fluffy, white puffs, the fuzz of the stem tickling my finger tips.

  
He giggles as he takes it from me, slapping his thighs from his excitement. The sound of his joy is mesmerizing but it’s his eyes that pin me in place, eyes that are so much like his mother’s that if I lose concentration for a moment, I think I’m looking at her. But I only have to shift my vision slightly to see that my boy looks just like me. His blond hair, defined features, longish nose and cleft chin all bear the trademark Mellark look.  Often, when he sleeps, I sit by his bed and watch him. I can’t stop staring at him because sometimes, I can’t believe he’s real.  I never thought I’d get myself together enough to be a father.

 

My thinking is interrupted when he blows on the flower, sending the white clouds directly onto my face. They tickle, and one slim stem clings to the stubble of my shaved chin.  I can’t help but laugh as I wipe the pieces away .  “You’re supposed to make a wish first.  A wish, you know?”

 

The boy frowns, his face becoming pensive, before his face splits into a smile again. He mutters, “I wish, I wish…” but I interrupt him, laughing again.

 

“No, don’t tell me your wish, because if you do, it won’t come true,” I say, handing him another dandelion.  

 

 _Wishes_.

 

Growing up, children in District 12 never had the luxury of asking even for the things we needed, much less for the things that we wanted.  My heart pounds a little faster knowing that my son will never live this reality. He will hope and dream fearlessly, because the world he lives in is a little bit gentler than the one that burned before.

 

I sense I’m being watched and turn to see Katniss’s eyes on us, her smile so sweet, it makes me suddenly ache to be near her.  She sits under a willow, holding our daughter in her arms.  The baby sleeps but Katniss doesn’t set her down on the picnic blanket.  Katniss rarely put the oldest baby down until he was too big to carry, tying him to her with a sling everywhere she went. She does the same now with the little one, as if she is afraid that by setting either of them down, she might misplace them or, worse, someone might sneak in behind her and take them away. Those were her nightmares both times she was pregnant - mutts or peacekeepers coming to tear her babies from her arms. In one particularly brutal nightmare, the baby was taken right out of her belly. Both pregnancies were so hard on her but you’d never know it by the way she takes care of them, as if they were gifts to her that she rediscovers each day she wakes.

 

But she’s watching me now and her impossibly light eyes have the same effect on me that they’ve always had.  I no longer see the torment that once clouded them and robbed her of her peace. I see the good things, everything we fought so hard to come back from, and all the ground we’ve covered. I don’t have to ask what’s real or what’s not anymore. After so many years, reality is no longer in question. When we play that game now, it is only because it has become a secret language between us, something evil that we stole away and turned into something special.

 

Without warning, my son hurtles into me, his little forehead banging against mine, pulling me away from thoughts of my wife. He giggles, satisfied that he has my attention again. I hug him compulsively, taking pleasure in the small, warm body that radiates security and feel the conviction that no harm can come to him.

 

“Daddy!” he cries out, handing me a dandelion, practically shoving it under my nose.  “Make a wish!  Make a wish!”

 

 _A wish_. I don’t want to ask for more.  As the my daughter’s wail pierces the air, and the soft sound of my wife’s voice murmuring her secrets follows closely behind, I feel a moment of panic, because we survived and we have all of this and it should be more than enough. But I can’t help it. There is something I want.  

 

When I ready myself to make my wish, it comes, not from me but from Katniss as her voice rises into the air, carrying the lullaby she sang to Rue, to me, to our son, and now to our smallest child, who has ceased to cry. The world falls silent at the sound of Katniss’s voice.  Again she forestalls me, anticipates me and gives me what I need without asking.

 

_Deep in the meadow, hidden far away_

_A cloak of leaves, a moonbeam ray_

_Forget your woes and let your troubles lay_

_And when again it's morning, they'll wash away._

 

_Here it's safe and here it's warm_

_And here the daisies guard you from every harm_

_And here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true_

_Here is the place where I love you._

 

This is all we’ve ever wanted, for us and for our children.

 

I fill my lungs and blow the dandelion past my son’s sun-kissed curls and into the spring air.

 


End file.
